this post was submitted on 12 Jul 2023
2328 points (99.1% liked)
Technology
59590 readers
4961 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I agree with all of the other regulations, but this one doesn't seem like a good thing.
Phones with internal batteries are arguably better for a variety of different reasons. I don't want any more flimsy phone bodies like the old androids. As long as the phone can be easily serviced, I think that is enough.
Not sure how removable batteries make a phone more flimsy. The back might pop off when you drop it, sure, but isn't that preferable to having it crack?
The usual argument manufacturers present is that water-proofing a phone involves having its interior be as completely sealed as possible, whereas a removable battery obviously requires that its interior be at least vaguely accessible, so it makes water-proofing substantially more challenging. Additionally, they can't be as efficient with packing the internals tightly since the battery has to be accessible without completely disassembling the entire phone, so devices have to be a bit thicker.
I won't pretend to have enough knowledge about device manufacturing to known just how sound those arguments are, but that's what they say.
What about water proofing? To make it popoff I guess they have to make it thicker. No expert here though.
Samsung xcover phones have removable batteries while retaining IP68 rating.
Waterproofing is what came to my mind.
Samsung used to make the "Active" lne of Galaxy phones which were waterproof shock resistent and had removable backs and batteries and a way for the phone to detect if the back was properly sealed.
I mean rubber seals and o-rings exist. If I remember correctly the law doesn’t demand easily swappable batteries, but rather them to be replaceable at all. So just use screws to hold the backplate in place, it could even look somewhat cool like on a Royal Oak Watch.
Most phones today are less waterproof than when they had replaceable batteries. There's no connection between the two, it's a red herring.
I had an LG with removable battery and a metal back. The manufacturers that said they couldn't make a removable back out of anything but shitty plastic were blowing smoke up your ass.
I'm sure we'll see plenty of skirting the laws around these batteries. "well actually, out barriers are removable and easily accessible if you do XYZ"
Any time there's regulations there's always a raft of companies saying how it's going to put them out of business, yet they'll all stick around and continue to make sales, almost like they need to adapt to changing environments.